Easier than you thought: Create your own online store now with WordPress and WooCommerce.
The ongoing coronavirus crisis is forcing many stores, especially smaller ones, to close their local stores for longer and longer periods. However, online retail is flourishing, which is benefiting industry giants such as Amazon and eBay in particular.
On the other hand, many examples show that it is precisely in this situation that small retailers have the opportunity to successfully operate online retail with good ideas. Customers are currently inclined to support local businesses by shopping online. However, anyone who has not yet been active in online retail is faced with the problem of creating a web store in a hurry. Item catalogs, payment methods, shipping methods and, last but not least, compliance with legal requirements in online retail - all of this initially seems dauntingly complicated and potentially expensive.
Fortunately, there are solutions that make setting up webshops much easier than you might think.
The approach presented here is based on the WordPress add-on WooCommercewhich can be used to create web stores with little effort on the basis of the popular WordPress content management system.
Closure phase optimally utilized: Better to start than to wait
If you open your own webshop now, you can make the most of the lockdown phase. It is therefore important to secure an additional sales channel now with a little effort.
The great thing is that once the webshop has been set up, it will continue to run when the store reopens.
It is not a problem if only a few items are initially available online. This may be because recording the products for online sales in words and images is so time-consuming or because parts of the product range are not suitable for online sales.
The store can also start with just a few items and the item base can then be expanded during operation. Experience shows that ideas for new store items come naturally when the store is up and running and you get a feel for which products can be marketed online and in what form.
Screenshot: Webshop Gasthof Alt Sieseby
This is how it works: Store Gasthof Alt Sieseby
As an example of a successful online retail initiative, we present the online store of our customer Maria von Randow, operator of the hotel and restaurant Gasthof Alt Sieseby. Gasthof Alt Sieseby was also affected by several weeks of closures during the first lockdown. Without further ado, Ms. von Randow decided that a restaurant can also do business online.
With just a handful of items, some of which were only available for collection on site, and purchase on account or cash on collection as the only payment methods, the web store was initially launched after a few weeks of preparation. The popularity quickly showed that the idea would take off. Numerous other products, new payment methods such as PayPal and many other functionalities were soon added. So in this case, even in a company in the catering industry, which of course traditionally lives from face-to-face business, the online store not only contributes to its importance as a source of income, but also to customer loyalty for the time after the lockdown:
How does the installation of Woocommerce work?
WooCommerce is a plugin, i.e. an extension, for the popular, freely available WordPress content management system. If you already have a website based on WordPress, it's particularly easy: WooCommerce can be installed and activated with just a few clicks using the "Install plugin" function.
If a WordPress base is not yet available, a WordPress system must first be installed and set up.
Then the setup of the store itself begins. The items, including prices, images and description texts, must be entered and payment and shipping methods defined. Other necessary settings relate, for example, to tax requirements or email messages that are sent as part of the ordering process.
Finally, the presentation of the items in the store, the shopping cart view and other order pages must also be attractively designed.
The store is then ready to go.
What does it cost to set up a webshop with WooCommerce?
Both WordPress and WooCommerce are available free of charge with the most important basic functionalities. However, when setting up the store, you may find that individual desired functions such as the legal requirements for Germany or certain payment or shipping methods or product options are not available in standard installations. Fortunately, there are almost infinite extensions for WooCommerce with which every requirement can be implemented. Premium extensions are subject to a fee, but even here the amounts are rather low compared to the "big" ones.
Some add-ons that typically offer required additional functions are briefly presented below:
Important for e-commerce customers: payment convenience
In Corona times, there may also be online stores that can cover sales initiated online with cash on collection in the regional area.
WooCommerce even supports payment via PayPal in the sense of a simple forwarding to the provider PayPal by default.
The integration of PayPal payments works much better with the PayPal Checkout extension, which establishes a connection to PayPal via API and thus enables the PayPal payment functions to be displayed directly on your own product pages. This also makes it possible to implement payment by credit card or SEPA direct debit.
A WooCommerce extension is also freely available for integrating the payment functions of the provider Klarna (formerly Sofortüberweisung).
For smooth processing: shipping extensions and parcel labels
When running an online store, it quickly becomes clear that a large part of the work involved is logistics. Storage, packaging, franking - all this means work and costs. This makes it all the more important to organize the processes as smoothly as possible. There are WooCommerce extensions for shipping via the major logistics providers such as DHL, UPS, Hermes, DPD etc. that help with this. On the one hand, there are extensions from the shipping companies themselves that offer functions such as shipping cost calculation, label printing, tracking and similar for processing via the respective company. On the other hand, various third-party providers compete with comprehensive shipping programs that offer standardized functionalities for processing via several logistics partners. The latter offers are usually associated with more or less high running costs and are more lucrative for larger webshops.
Legally compliant e-commerce
Small retail businesses in particular often shy away from taking the step into online retailing out of concern about taking legal risks in ignorance of complex legal requirements. Even in this situation, there is assistance for WooCommerce stores for legally compliant operation of the web store in compliance with the special regulations for e-commerce under German law.
Extensions such as Germanized or German Market provide the necessary information for the correct recording and display of cancellation policies, shipping costs, tax regulations and much more. For the use of all functionalities, running costs of between around EUR 50 and EUR 100 per year must be taken into account for both extensions mentioned, depending on the scope of use.
It's even easier: Simply set up your webshop with MaiNetCare
We present you an online store package in a short time based on WordPress / WooCommerce, with which you can sell your goods or services on the Internet.
Secure and legally compliant for the German market.